(Russian: devastation, or riot), a mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar ALEXANDER II in 1881. Although the assassin was not a Jew, and only one Jew was associated with him, false rumours aroused Russian mobs in more than 200 cities and towns to attack Jews and destroy their property. In the two decades following, pogroms gradually became less prevalent; but from 1903 to 1906 they were common throughout the country. Thereafter, to the end of the Russian monarchy, mob action against the Jews was intermittent and less widespread.

The pogrom in Kishinev (now Chisinau) in Russian-ruled Moldavia in April 1903, although more severe than most, was typical in many respects. For two days mobs, inspired by local leaders acting with official support, killed, looted, and destroyed without hindrance from police or soldiers. When troops were finally called out and the mob dispersed, 45 Jews had been killed, nearly 600 had been wounded, and 1,500 Jewish homes had been pillaged. Those responsible for inciting the outrages were not punished.

The Russian central government did not organize pogroms, as was widely believed; but the anti-Semitic policy that it carried out from 1881 to 1917 made them possible. Official persecution and harassment of Jews led the numerous anti-Semites to believe that their violence was legitimate, and their belief was strengthened by the active participation of a few high and many minor officials in fomenting attacks and by the reluctance of the government either to stop pogroms or to punish those responsible for them.

Pogroms have also occurred in other countries, notably in Poland and in Germany during the HITLER regime. See also anti-Semitism; Kristallnacht.

Moreover, GROSS's study does not point unequivocally to a longstanding tradition of Jew-hatred as the principal cause of the murder. Until the Germans came along, no signs of any special tension between Poles and Jews in Jedwabne were apparent; on the contrary, it appears that between the two world wars the relations between the two groups were more or less calm.

Our correspondent asked Jan GROSS how he feels on those occasions when he chances to revisit Jedwabne. His answer was direct."I don't go to Jedwabne right now. I wouldn't be welcome there."The author of "Neighbors" said he expects his next appearance in Jedwabne to be this summer at the time of the anniversary memorial ceremony. He noted: "There will be a few other people there then."

The Polish site in the San Francisco Bay Area bringt Einwände gegen die von GROSS genannten Zahlen.

Meanwhile, the National Remembrance Institute, which launched an investigation into the Jedwabne pogrom last year, has found new evidence regarding the number of people who may have been the victims of the 1941 massacre. Historian JERZY MILEWSKI from the Bialystok branch of the National Remembrance Institute reported that, according to Soviet data, there were 562 Jews living in Jedwabne in 1940. "This data is significantly at variance with that which is in circulation," MILEWSKI said. GROSS wrote in his book that some 1,600 Jews perished in the Jedwabne pogrom.

State Archive Director DARIA NALECZ on 26 March presented documents discovered in the archives of Lomza, which include accounts from 19 witnesses (of whom nine were of Jewish descent), PAP reported. NALECZ said all those accounts point to Germans as the perpetrators of the Jedwabne pogrom.

Two Polish historians have questioned the credibility of witnesses cited in the book "Neighbors" by JAN GROSS on the 1941 pogrom in Jedwabne (see "RFE/RL Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine Report," 6 and 20 March 2001), PAP reported on 29 March.

Arguments were made by the prosecutor WALDEMAR MONKIEWICZ, in, amongst others, an extensive article entitled Extermination of Jewish settlements in the Bialystok region in the years of 1939-1944". In this article he presents a thesis that the burning of the Jews in the barn was conducted by a German special unit, under the command of a Gestapo member WOLFGANG BÜRKNER, who was infamous for his role in the occupation of Warsaw, assisted by gendarmerie and military police. The latter participated merely in escorting the victims to the square in Jedwabne and in leading the convoy out of town, to the barn, where the Germans, having poured petrol on the walls, burnt around 900 men, women and children.

I read it all. Even more: I copied by hand all the documents elementary to the case of the murder, maintaining accurately their style and writing, which were, one might add 150; very characteristic. I have to admit that the more I read the files, the more my amazement increased. These files, when treated in a serious and complex manner, say something entirely different from what Professor GROSS claims; Professor GROSS based his arguments mainly on these files, although these were not the only documents used. Professor GROSS constantly stresses the fact that because he can rely on such a rich and credible source basis, he has the right to formulate authoritative claims that others can oppose with accounts only  and those accounts were given many years later.

In their final cessation appeal to the Supreme Court the defence lawyers indicated that SZMUL WASERSZTAJN had never been interrogated or questioned by either Security Service (UB) officers, or by prosecutors or during court proceedings. Answering this, the Supreme Court stated that this had been a serious infringement but, as the court had not based the proceedings on the WASERSZTAJN account but on testimonies of direct witnesses, the infringement did not have significant impact. It is SZMUL WASERSZTAJN who provides the most violent passages in Professor GROSSs book. These facts which stimulate imagination so much have not been confirmed by any other sources.

In interwar Poland as elsewhere in Catholic Europe, the Jewish question was seen as largely originating in 1717. Catholic theologians found it striking that Providence seemed to unleash Satan at two-hundred year intervals: first 1517, then 1717, and most recently 1917. Readers with a sense of history will recognize 1517 as the onset of the Protestant Reformation, and 1917 as the year of the Bolshevik revolution. But 1717? Most reflection on the 1930s and the Jewish question ignores or gives short shrift to the founding of the Grand Lodge in London and the organization of modern Freemasonry in 1717.

The notion of a sinister alliance between Freemasons and Jews to subvert traditional European society originated in Germany but first flourished in France, where it played a conspicuous role in the turn-of-the-century DREYFUS Affair. Juden und Freimauer was a battle-cry for the German right wing, as it was for HITLER in his rise to power. Although a staple of the antisemitic arsenal of the 1930s and closely connected with the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion (vgl. Surftipp 35/2000), the idea of a Masonic-Jewish alliance has been largely forgotten today, neglected even by writers on Christian-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. [...]

In this book we find testimonies of seven Yedwabner Jews and one noble gentile woman who witnessed the most heroic moments of the bitter end. After heinous atrocities by their gentile neighbors, who had obtained permission from the Nazi authorities, the weakened Jewish Community of Yedwabne, 1440 in number, were forced into a barn where they burned them alive.

A friendly German told me the secret that Russia and Germany had already divided Poland between themselves and that in a few days 600 Jews would be permitted to go wherever they desired. He warned me that if I'd be asked where we wish to go, we must say : "we want to go home". He also warned me not to go to the train station because there the Germans were in readiness to shoot any Jew who would approach. I informed all the Jews in the camp of this. All those who did what I told them remained alive and reached home, including the PECYNOWITZ family.

When I came back to Yedwabne I found the Russians in control there. We first thought that under the Russians we would be saved. But to our sorrow, they too arrested many Jews, accusing them of being anti-communist, and from the remainder, they confiscated all their possessions.

I started again in my business with a horse and wagon. Shortly before the Germans began their war against the Russians, CHAYA PIEKARZ (from the miller's family) came to me and begged me to take her to Bialystok. The Russians did not permit us to carry passengers. But I took a chance and took tills wonderful woman to Bialystok and left her there with my sister for several days. CHAYA PIEKARZ told me that she had a passport and visa to go to her two sons in the States. She tried to get to Japan and from there to the States. Since that time I haven't seen her, nor have I heard from her.

When the Germans attacked the Russians in the year 1941, many Jews ran to Russia. I couldn't do it for I had to care for my aged father and a sister with a child whose husband was then in Uruguay. I also had to help my brother's wife and 4 children. My brother was also in Urugvay.

As soon as the Germans conquered our section, the Polish goyim of the surrounding villages began planning with them how to exterminate the Jews. They drove all the Jews of Yedwabne, among them also were Jews from Wizno, and Radzilova, into the market place and left them in the burning sun without water to drink. They had there 1440 people including men, women and children. After merciless beatings and many killings on the spot, they drove them into a barn belonging to BRONEK SHLISHENSKI. Standing nearby were the known Jew haters : JACK and STEPHAN KOZLOWSKI, the blacksmith from Pshestreler Street near the cemetery, the baker KURLEVSKI, AURBACH and his son-in-law, and the entire family of the OSETZKES who lived near the barn. With joyful songs they poured benzene upon the barn and ignited it with the Jews packed within. At the door stood STASHEK SHILAVIUK with an ex in his hand ready to behead anyone trying to escape from the barn. I was standing with my family at the door, for I had the good luck of being among the last ones forced into the barn. Suddenly, by the force of the flame, the door opened up and when I saw STASHEK SHILAVIUK at the other side of the door ready to hit me with the ax, I managed to pull the ax from his hands and managed also to take with me my sister, her five year old daughter, and ITZCHAK AARON MENDEL's son. The latter's back was already scorched with wounds that never healed. He later perished in Aushwitz. I could see my father falling burned to the ground. We ran to the cemetery and lay there till night fell.

Cardinal GLEMP backtracked on Sunday following a letter of objection he received from Warsaws Rabbi MICHAEL SCHUDRICH. But in admitting that Poles did murder Jedwabnes Jews  the burning of Jews, forced by Poles into a barn, is indisputable, the Primate said  he compared the slaughter to the bloodshed among neighbors in Palestine.

The murders of innocents in Jedwabne, Katyn [where Polish military leaders were killed by Soviet police], Dachau, Auschwitz, elicit our pain as members of the human species in the same way as murders in Rwanda, in the Balkans, or among neighbors in Palestine, Cardinal GLEMP said in a radio address.

Rabbi SCHUDRICH again objected Monday, saying such comparisons are demeaning to the memory of the martyrs of Jedwabne.

A painful self-examination has begun. Wprost, a weekly paper, has listed ten major episodes of Polish anti-Semitism. The most recent was in 1968, when an outburst of anti-Jewish feeling led many of Polands surviving Jews to flee the country. Some impressive investigative journalism has uncovered new facts for the historians to consider. People are talking about it in bars and living rooms. For the first time it doesnt avoid anything, and it is public. It is tremendously positive, says STANISLAW KRAJEWSKI, a leader of Polands Jewish community, which nowadays numbers only about 7,000.

Catholic intellectuals have led the debate. The Polish primate, Cardinal JOZEF GLEMP, has issued an apology. But Jedwabnes local priest, and some right-wingers, have seen less cause for contrition. LECH WALESAs former confessor, Father HENRYK JANKOWSKI, has shocked many people by denying any Polish role in the killings. Most right-wingers do not go so far. The killing of Jews was wrong, they admitbut so was the deportation of Poles to Siberia, often, they say, the result of collaboration by Jews with the Soviet secret police (half of Poland was under Soviet occupation from 1939 to 1941).

When Their Neighbors' Indifference Gave Way to Massacre. A Simple Tale of Murder, and a Complex Portrait of Community, Underline the Dilemma of Being a Jew in Postwar Poland. Forward 20.4.2001 Book review by SAMUEL B. KASSOWMr. KASSOW, a history professor at Trinity College, is currently completing a book titled "Between History and Memory: EMANUEL RINGELBLUM in the Warsaw Ghetto," to be published by Indiana University Press in 2002.

That same day a triumph gate was set up in Radzilow on the Lomze highway to welcome the German army. HITLERs portrait was hung up along with the slogan: "Long live the German army that has freed us from the accursed Jewish-commune."

On July 7, 1941, at three oclock in the afternoon, the Gestapo went together from Stawiski to Radzilow. At their command, trusted individuals were called who were already prepared to get even with the Jews. At the market place they called together, 1700 Jews, men, women, children and elderly. The "gangsters" encircled the market so that no one could escape. Walking about among those who were forced together were YANEK WALSZEWSKI, the so-called "American," YANEK MORDASZEWSKI and FELIKS his brother, HENRYK DZIEKONSKI and his brother YAN, and many Gestapo members. They beat the Jews bloody. Thus, for example, they beat the old shoemaker ARTEL LIPINSKI. He was covered with blood, unconscious. They hung a heavy stone around the neck of the former policeman T. SHTSHANI. As he fell under the heavy burden, the murderers beat him mercilessly. Many others fell in this manner. Then they all began to sing "Moscow Moyah" and they went about beating everyone, including small children and old people.

After accomplishing these cruel deeds, the Gestapo members exclaimed: "We give you three days to reckon with the Jews." They distributed arms to the quot;gangsters" and left. The execution started: the "gangsters" armed with machine-guns and revolvers drove those assembled into MITKOWSKIs barn, which is located near the village Radivyesh. They purposefully jammed the doors, drenched the barn with kerosene, and ignited it. When the barn was already in flames, they brought the captured Jews and forced them up a ladder to the roof and then inside. They cut with bayonets those who did not carry out the command, and threw them into the fire. A few who succeeded to crawl out from the fire were shot by the murderers who encircled the barn. The singing and loud cries of the thugs accompanied the horrible laments and awful cries of the unfortunates who met their deaths in the fire. The spilling of blood was not enough for these creatures. They had a slogan: "Kill to the last one." They started to search out Jews in the entire area. In the course of three days, they found another few hundred Jews. They killed them in a bestial fashion. Many they forced into the barn, drenched them with benzene and burned them alive. A great many they shot near the barn, beating them murderously before death. Because of a lack of ammunition, they allowed the heads of small children to be cracked with fists or pounded with fists until they were dead. They tore some limbs from living souls, and beat up victims before carrying out the murders. After the fire, they entered the barn and tore gold teeth from the dead bodies.

The pogrom lasted three days, from the 7th to the 10th of July, 1941. On the third day, some Germans came and yanked away several victims from the hands of the thugs, exclaiming that they had already permitted too much [violence]. One can imagine the sight of these horrible deeds, if the Germans themselves interceded.

city, capital, Kielce województwo (province), southeastern Poland. It lies in the Holy Cross Mountains. Located on the Warsaw-Kraków rail line, Kielce is a major industrial centre that has metallurgical, machine, and food-production facilities.

First chronicled in the late 11th century, the market town obtained municipal rights in 1360. It developed as an industrial and religious centre for the area, being held as an episcopal property from the 14th to the 16th century. Passing to Austria in 1795, it was freed during the Napoleonic Wars and then came under Russian control; in 1918 it was returned to Poland. During World War II, four German extermination camps were located there. The city contains a Baroque (163741) Bishop's Palace, now housing the Museum Swietokrzyskie, and a 17th-century cathedral (built 163235; rebuilt 19th century). Pop. (1989 est.) 211,100.

The pogrom in Kielce took place on July 4, 1946, but some events which are very strongly connected with that pogrom started a few days before. On July 1, a nine-year-old boy, HENRYK BLASZCZYK, left home without informing his parents. Little HENRYK set out to visit friends of his parents in the village of Bielaki, almost 25 kilometers from Kielce. HENRYK's visit took place during summer vacation, and it was not the boy's first visit there. During the war, his family had lived in the village for some time as well. In Kielce, HENRYK's father, Walenty BLASZCZYK, troubled by his son's absence, began searching for him. When searches and inquires brought no results, HENRYK was reported missing to the police at midnight. On July 3, HENRYK decided to return home, and that evening he came back to Kielce.

His family and neighbors asked him where he had been. In response, he told a story about an unknown gentlemen whom he had met in Kielce. He asked him to deliver a parcel to some house and after that he put the boy in a cellar. With the help of another boy who was also there, HENRY escaped on July 3. Obviously, the story was told by the boy to avoid punishment, but the neighbors and the boy's parents believed it. But two neighbors who were at the BLASZCZYKs' home when HENRYK came back had questions. One asked the boy whether the gentleman he described was a Gypsy or a Jew, and the boy replied that the unknown gentleman did not speak Polish and that he therefore had to be a Jew. However, in response to a similar question asked by another neighbor, the boy merely replied that he was put in a cellar by a man without giving any information about his nationality. In other words, two persons suggested to little HENRYK that Jews could have been the perpetrators of his abduction, and this information was reported to the police station on the evening of July 3.

On the next day, July 4, at about 8 a.m., WALENTY BLASZCZYK (the boy's father) set out for the police station with his son and one of the neighbors. On the way, they passed the house where Jewish families lived in Kielce, the so-called Jewish house.

According to the testimony given by the father and the neighbor, they asked the boy if he had been kept at the Jewish home. HENRYK not only stated that he had been held there, but he also pointed to one short man standing near the Jewish house and said that this man had put him in a cellar.

At the police station, HENRYK's story was treated as a truthful. In a short time, three police patrols were dispatched to Planty Street, where the Jewish house was located. Planty street was a small street in the center of the town, and it ran perpendicular to the main streets in which the regular police, the Security (political, secret police ), and the army had their headquarters.

At about 10 a.m., the police patrols and a group of functionaries from the political police were joined by an army contingent on Planty Street. According to the testimony of the deputy commander of the army division to which the soldiers belonged, about one hundred soldiers and five officers were dispatched to Planty Street. The newly arrived troops had not been told anything about the events, and they came to believe that Jews had kidnaped and murdered Polish children in the house on Planty Street. The soldiers got their information from the people gathered on the street. With the arrival of the troops, tensions rose very quickly.

The soldiers and the policemen then went into the building. Jews were told to surrender their weapons, but not all of the residents obeyed the order. The entry of the policemen and the soldiers into the Jewish house marked the beginning of the pogrom. Excerpts from testimony supplied by people who witnessed the outbreak of the pogrom describe what followed.

EWA SZUCHMAN, resident of the house on Planty Street, said:

After the police took away the weapons, the crowd broke into the Kibutz ( on the second floor) and policemen started shooting at the Jews first. They killed one and wounded several others.

ALBERT GRYNBAUM, another inhabitant of the Jewish house who was on the first floor, said:

The soldiers went up to the second floor. Several minutes later two Jews came to me and told me that the soldiers were killing Jews and looting their property. It was then that I heard shots. After the shooting on the second floor, shots were heard from the street and inside the building.

This is how the Kielce pogrom began. The behavior of the policemen and the soldiers, influenced by the crowd outside, provoked it into action. After the attack inside the building, the Jews were led outside where the people killed them in a cruel fashion.

Major SOBCZYNSKI, the local secret police commander, and his Soviet advisor SZOILEVOY, were on Planty Street at that time, as were other local officials and army commanders. During the first phase of the pogrom, the monsignor of the cathedral parish in Kielce went to Planty Street with another priest. They were going to check on what had happened and to talk with people gathered there. Officers stopped them. The priests were told that the situation was under control, and that civilians were prohibited from entering Planty Street.

Until noon, all attempts to stop the pogrom brought no results. At that time, the pogrom spilled over into the city itself as well. One resident of Kielce recalled:

At 11:30 some eight young people coming from the direction of the railroad station on Sienkiewicz Street ran a man down in the middle of the road. He was hit with fists in the face and head. From his face I could tell he was a Semite. I would like to mention that as a former prisoner of concentration camps I had not gone through an experience like this. I have seen very little sadism and bestiality of this scale.

Provokationstheorien

Some historians, however, have interpreted the political situation in Poland at the time as a priori proof that the pogrom did in fact grow out of a premeditated act of political provocation. A further provocation theory was put forward by the leaders of the anti-communist Polish Peasant Party, STEFAN KORBONSKI and STANSISLAW MIKOLAJCZYK. KORBONSKI and MIKOLAJCZYK contended that the pogrom had been organized by the head of the Kielce Security Bureau, Major SOBCZYNSKI, with the aim of discrediting Polish society in the eyes of Western Europe. KORBONSKI and MIKOLAJCZYK pointed to the unexplained role of the neighbors of the BLASZCZYK family, the ones who suggested to little HENRY that Jews had kept him. KORBONSKI and MIKOLAJCZYK also emphasized the manner in which the pogrom unfolded and its proximity to the national referendum.

ARTHUR BLISS-LANE, the US ambassador to Poland at the time, wrote that "I did not have a final proof for the Government's participation in the instigation of the Kielce pogrom, but, because of the incredible inefficiency demonstrated by the police and Security Bureau, I started to consider whether the Government willingly used that occasion to condemn its main critics."

The most sophisticated provocation theory is the one presented by MICHAL CHECINSKI in his book, Poland, Communism, Nationalism, Anti-Semitism. Mr. CHECINSKI thinks that the pogrom was prepared by Soviet advisers present in Kielce. He argues that the Soviet Union had the most to gain and that "the political opposition suffered by gaining a bad reputation abroad [...] the attention of Western media was turned away from the rigging of an important national referendum by the Polish authorities. The Soviet Union achieved an important political goal when mass-emigrating Polish Jews overflowed the Displaced Persons camps in the western zones of Germany and Austria and, at the same time, undermined British rule in Palestine." Mr. CHECINSKI supports his thesis by noting that Soviet advisers took part in the interrogations of people arrested during and after the pogrom.

The tragic events known as the Pogrom of Kielce of 1946 are demonstrably a part of Soviet postwar global strategy. The Soviets ruthlessly exploited Jews for Soviet political purposes. The pogroms staged behind the lines of the Red Army were provoked or condoned in order to generate an exodus of Jews who otherwise would not emigrate. The migration of Jews to Palestine was needed by the Soviets to abolish the British mandate there and profit from Arab-Israeli conflict in order to interfere with oil supplies to the West. Meanwhile, a minority of the Jewish population was used by the Soviets to establish communist regimes in the satellite states.

The Pogrom of Kielce was ignited by the Soviet introduction of an organized provocation based on planting false reports of ritual murders, a method of provoking violence originally started by the czarist governments. As was detailed, a very similar provocation was staged a year earlier in Rzeszow by the same NKVD agents. The Pogrom of Kielce was timed for anti-Polish propaganda purposes to persuade the Western powers that Poland should remain a colony of the Soviets, rather than being allowed to return to freedom as did other Allied nations. For that reason it was singled out for extensive news coverage which was to convince Western politicians that "Polish anti-Semitism" could only be tamed by the Soviets and that allowing Poland to become free would cause another wave of anti-Semitism and murders of Jews.

The Kielce Pogrom, perhaps more than any other historical occurrence, has been used to falsely show evidence of Polish actions to exterminate Jews. This view, clearly put forward by a 1940's Soviet establishment keen to subjugate Poland, has been allowed to become the commonly accepted "conventional wisdom." In this case, the conventional wisdom is wrong: it does not square with the historical facts. Those who can examine the historical record, but then choose to ignore it and purposely libel an entire nation and ethnic group, are on the wrong side of history: they are using the methods of HITLER and STALIN.

An interesting thing happened at about 11 a.m., one hour after the start of the riot. The local district attorney, JAN WRZECZCZ (SZAYNOK, p. 37), made a plea to those in charge of the security forces to allow WRZECZCZ to work with the local police force to put an immediate end to the violence. Those in charge of the security forces rejected his plea. The plea was made to NKVD supervisor Col. SHPILEVOY and to Maj. SOBCZYNSKI-SPYCHAJ, head of the local security forces. Shortly after the plea was received, telephone calls were made to key security leaders in Warsaw. The office log of SOBCZYNSKI-SPYCHAJ contains notes of his telephone conversations with STANISLAW RADKIEWICZ, who was the Minister of Public Security, and with JAKUB BERMAN, a Jew who was at the time the main Soviet agent in the ruling Polish Politburo in charge of all security matters. Clearly, the Soviet agents wanted the provocation to continue, and wanted to thwart all efforts to stop the violence.

The demand for a parliamentary investigation of the pogrom was rejected by the communist government. The Soviet-led government promised formation of an investigative commission composed of all political parties. It never materialized.

Since one of the aims of the Soviets was to cause an exodus of Jews from Poland, the Soviet authorities took actions to make the exit from Poland as easy as possible. A few days after the funeral of the victims of violence staged by the Soviets in Kielce, Russian General GWIDON CZWINSKI, the chief of border guards, called his Jewish assistant, MICHAL RUDAWSKI, and ordered him to establish two more "illegal" crossing points for Jews on the Czechoslovakian border. (KRZYSZTOF KAKOLEWSKI, "I apologize for DARIUSZ ROSATI", Konflikty, Warsaw: March 28, 1996). These crossing points were supposedly illegal, but in reality they were purposely established by the Soviets and allowed free egress for Jews but not for anyone else. The new crossings were added to those existing already in Szczecin (Jewish code name Khyzar, or bristle in Hebrew, because Szczecin in Polish means bristle market) and in Klodzko (Jewish code name Dorom). The southern crossings were to serve Jewish emigrants going though Austria to Palestine and the northern crossing at Szczecin served those Jews who travelled to West German displaced persons' camps arid from there south though Austria or Italy to Palestine. As stated before, about two-thirds of the Jewish emigrants preferred to go to the United States, France, or other western country. As a result of Jewish emigration, by the end of 1946, there were 100,000 Jews left in Poland of the quarter of a million that were there at the beginning of the year. At the same time, over 200,000 Polish Jews were in West Germany and Austria waiting for further migration. The Anglo-American Commission promised admission of 100,000 Jews to Palestine. In the West German Displaced-Persons' camps, Jewish socialists advocated returning to Poland while Zionists insisted on immigration to Palestine. (I.C. POGONOWSKI, "Jews in Poland: A Documentary History," New York: Hippocrene Books Inc., 1993, p. 349).

A Polish motion picture, "The Witnesses," illustrates the feelings of pain and shame inflicted on the Polish society by the Kielce Pogrom. Many realized that the Soviet provocation succeeded in damaging the good name of the Polish people by cynically staging the vicious pogrom and playing up the card of anti-Semitism. Soviet occupation and policies conditioned a limited number of people in Kielce to respond to the provocation. Also, no one familiar with the Kielce Pogrom claimed that it was a spontaneous violence. (Kersten, pp. 96, 130). The Catholic Church clearly stated that the provocateurs and perpetrators of the murder in Kielce must be absolutely and without any reservations condemned in the light of God's and human laws and that all rumors about Jewish ritual murders are lies (July 7, 1946, Bishop TEODOR KUBINA). Cardinal HLOND, the Catholic Primate of Poland, stated on July 11, 1946: "Catholic clergy always and everywhere condemn murder. Murder must be condemned also in Poland: against Poles, against Jews in Kielce and other locations. The violence in Kielce was not brought by racism, but by entirely different painful and tragical causes." (KERSTEN, p. 102). CZESLAW MILOSZ, Nobel price laureate for Polish literature, called these tactics "socialist terrorism." Among victims of the Soviet or socialist terrorism were many Polish democratic leaders who were neither anti-Semitic nor reactionary.

Unfortunately, the Moscow files on the Kielce violence have never been opened. These perhaps contain the reports of NKVD/KGB Col. Natan Shpilevoy and G.R.U. high-ranking officer MIKHAIL DYOMIN, who apparently was in charge of choosing the site and staging the provocation in Kielce. Thus, in the absence of direct evidence from Moscow, the Soviet provocation remains the most likely hypothesis, one that is corroborated by all of the available evidence. Clearly, the presence and activities of these two Soviet officers preclude any possibility that the violence in Kielce erupted spontaneously.

Although the mention of the kielce pogrom was taboo in Polish circles for almost 50 years , various writers have tried to explain away the causes of the events, suggesting that it was a provocation or a conspiracy by certain political elements, or even by the Zionists themselves , who would gain from the exodus of the Jews from Poland to Israel. The more intelligent among the poles maintained that polish animosity to Jews was caused by Germans fascists who coerced the Poles to cooperate with the Germans in locating and identifying the Jews.

All these "explanations" were lies because the pogrom occurred eighteen months after the city had been liberated and there were no more Germans. The pogrom proved to the whole world that the poles, at least the great majority of them, needed no German encouragement. Hence the eagerness of Poland today to make up with the surviving Jews of Poland living overseas.

A recent film, produced by a German producer with Belorus cooperation, is based on the events in Kielce in 1946. It is a feature film with documentary background. The film is generally unfavorable to Poland , although there are some scenes putting the Poles in a human light, e.g. the execution of a polish couple by SS men, for hiding a Jew in their home.

The film is entitled "from hell to hell". It is forbidden in Poland, though it is a candidate for several awards. It indicates the fact that when the remnants of the Jewish inmates of the Concentration camps came back, looking like skeletons, they were greeted by their former compatriots with astonishment: "what, you are still alive? we thought the Germans have killed all of you. Never mind, we shall finish you off." No wonder that a French book, written in 1985 is entitled: "Le massacre Des survivants".

The Kielce pogrom touches many problems. The most painful and traumatic of these problems is the existence of anti-Semitism in Poland after World War II. Poles were clearly willing to participate in an act of anti-Jewish violence. Some anti-Semitic attitudes present in Polish society after 1945 had roots in the period before the war. And others were connected to specific post-war developments, including what has been called the "heritage of the war." EDMUND OSMANCZYK, a Polish writer and journalist, has written about "the generation infected by death". This first post-war generation knew death intimately--death was something tangible and real. It was easy to kill or to allow someone to be killed. Osmanczyk also highlights a corresponding weakness of morality and values. [...]

An additional psychological factor that should be mentioned is the Poles' memory of the behavior of some Jews on the Polish territories seized by the Soviet Union in September 1939. Disputes over property were motivating factors in their anti-Semitism. For example, 13 Jews were killed in the Kielce region in June 1945. Ten of them were killed because of property disputes. From June 1945 to December 1945 there were about thirty attacks on Jews in all of Poland. Eleven attacks involved robbery, and five were caused by property disputes.

For Poland - it finally freed the country from its Jewish minority , as some 200,000 surviving Jews, most of whom came back from Russia , eventually left Poland. However , the pogrom became known as the "mark of cain" on the forehead of Poland.

For Israel - the exodus of Jews from Poland and other east European countries eventually brought some 200,000 Jews to the young state , following the end of the British mandate which , to some extent , was the result of this exodus.

For The Americans - when the occupation authorities in Germany and Austria repatriated almost all non Jewish DPs they tried forcibly to send back the Jews to Poland, claiming that after all it was their country of birth , their language and culture , their compatriots and homeland. It was after the Kielce pogrom when some Jewish repatriates came back badly wounded, that the Americans understood that the Jewish problem is of a different nature.

For the church - the fact that no priest was sent out to speak to the crowds at the site of the pogrom is a stigma on the church. According to survivors in Israel , several days before the tragic events a Jewish delegation , feeling tension in the air , went to the bishop , but were told that the church cannot intervene on behalf of the Jews, because they brought Communism upon Poland.

For Jewish history - those who still believed in the possibility of rebuilding the Jewish communities in Poland and in Europe in general , had to change their outlook and reconcile themselves to the fact that this chapter came to an end.